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July 27, 2014 Revisiting my Double Crossover

It's been awhile since my post on my double crossover and I figured it was time to revisit it. My home brew 4 Atlas Custom Line Turnout & Crossover kitbash has worked flawlessly since the day I installed it.

It's been two years since I built and installed my Double Crossover and I have done a lot of scenery work around it but as you can see I still have a lot more to do before it's finished. I have run many passenger and freights through the crossover without a single problem from creep to wide open forward and reverse.

My layout was conceived and designed around having a double crossover at this location. I began laying my track in the late 1980s starting out with a Walthers/Shinohara Double Crossover in place. After months of laying the track the first locomotive I ran to test out my super dream layout was a brand new Rivarossi Cab Forward and it derailed every attempt going through the double crossover.

I worked on the crossover for weeks until there was nothing left of it. I pulled up the totally destroyed crossover and replaced the track with a pair of Atlas turnouts forming a single crossover.

The picture above shows the temporary fix that lasted over twenty years with my CAD drawing of my proposed replacement.

I was depressed for months because of the failure. Over the twenty year period I tried many double crossovers from different manufacturers but none of them would pass my Rivarossi locomotives without derailing, over twenty plus years I had acquired eighteen Rivarossi articulated locomotives. In case you can't tell the Rivarossi articulateds are my favorite locomotive, with a little TLC they all run perfect and look great doing it. With a few modifications they will perform as good as or better than expensive articulated locomotives.

After more than twenty years I finally decided that because my Rivarossi fleet would easily negotiate any and all of the turnouts on my layout easily including #4s it was time to make my own double crossover from normal Atlas Custom Line Code 83 turnouts. I have a few specialty Peco Code 83 turnouts that work very good but the majority of my turnouts are Atlas Code 83 making Atlas my choice for the project.

I started by making a CAD drawing using Atlas Custom Line Code 83 Turnouts as a go-by. With a bit of elbow grease and a sharp track cutting tool I now have a super good working double crossover that will handle any locomotive I own from the smallest to the largest as well as every piece of rolling stock from 25 foot shorties to 85 footers, they all sail through my double crossover turnout slick as a whistle.

My First HO Locomotive

Way back in the fall of 1952 I bought my first HO Locomotive, it was a MDC/Model Roundhouse 0-6-0 Switch Engine Kit, I still have it and it is still in prefect condition. It cost $6.85 back then, I used my Newspaper Route money to purchase it from H&H Hobby Shop in El Paso Texas.

My Greatest Railroad Treasure

It's a Fawcett Book Number 133, it cost 45¢ in 1951. That was a lot of money in 1951, a 24 bottle case of Cokes was 65¢ back then. There is an article starting on page 28 on John Allen's railroad, there is only 4 pages on his layout but I was hooked on HO scale from that day on.

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